PA N E L S
IMPACT FILMMAKING Moderator
Robin Bronk is CEO of The Creative Coalition—the leading national, nonprofit, nonpartisan social and public advocacy organization of the arts and entertainment industry. As CEO, Bronk is dedicated to educating, mobilizing, and activating the entertainment industry and arts community on issues of public importance, particularly the First Amendment, arts advocacy, arts in education, and media literacy. She has published three books, Art & Soul (Hearst Communications) and If You Had Five Minutes With the President (Harper Collins), and the upcoming Art of Discovery (in bookstores October 14th from Rizzoli Publishing).
Panelists: Joe Berlinger is an Academy Award® and seven-time Emmy® nominated and Peabody winning filmmaker, Joe Berlinger whose films include the landmark documentaries Brother’s Keeper, the Paradise Lost Trilogy and Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster, a film that redefined the rockumentary genre. Crude, about oil pollution in the Amazon Rainforest, won 22 human rights, environmental and film festival awards and Under African Skies, about Paul Simon’s seminal album, was nominated for three primetime Emmy® awards. Recently Berlinger completed Hank: 5 Years From The Brink (2013 WFF) for Netflix and WHITEY: United States of America v. James J. Bulger, which was released by Magnolia Pictures.
A six-time grantee of the National Geographic Expeditions Council and award-winning writer Joe Bowermaster and filmmaker, Jon Bowermaster was recently named one of a dozen Ocean Heroes by the NGS. Author of twelve books, his companion book to the Jacques Perrin/Disney Nature film “Oceans” was published alongside the film’s U.S. premiere. Jon’s most recent documentaries are Dear Governor Cuomo, a unique look at the controversy surrounding fracking in New York State and Antarctica 3D, On the Edge. Films in-production include Dear President Obama, Americans Against Fracking In One Voice, Free Swim: Maldives and After the Spill.
Emmy® Award winning producer Jedd Wider has produced, along with his brother Todd, numerous critically and commercially successful feature documentary films including King’s Jedd Wider Point, nominated for a 2012 Academy Award® for Best Documentary Short, the multiple Primetime Emmy® Award and Peabody Award winning Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, the Emmy® Award nominated Semper Fi: Always Faithful (2011 WFF), the multiple Emmy Award nominated Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (2010 WFF), and Taxi to the Dark Side, the 2008 Academy Award® Winner for Best Documentary, a 2008 Peabody Award Winner and 2009 Emmy® Award Winner for Best Documentary. He was nominated by the Producers Guild of America for Outstanding Producer of Documentary Theatrical Motion Pictures.
Long And Short Stories: A Conversation with RON NYSWANER
PA N E L S
Independent filmmakers have been known to devote their lives, time, money, work, hearts and souls into issue films with the hope of making an impact and effecting change in others' lives. They may choose to shine a light on a problem in a remote part of the world, or on an environmental concern or social problem, looking to inspire and mobilize. But is there success at the end of all that work? Do their labors of love really change anything? How many films like Supersize Me and An Inconvenient Truth can there be our world? This panel of dedicated filmmakers (with a cause) will examine these questions as they try to come up with answers for when, how and why some films can be a tool for change.
Kleinert/James Center Saturday Oct 18 • 12:00pm
Kleinert/James Center Saturday Oct 18 • 2:00pm
From Philadelphia to Ray Donovan: writing and producing films and series in television’s “second golden age.” Ron Nyswaner’s writing and producing career has taken him through the major shifts in the film and television industry, from independent films to breakthrough Hollywood dramas, award-winning television movies and, most recently, a hit cable series. In a lively and insightful conversation with US Weekly editor, Bradley Jacobs, Nyswaner will discuss the attraction of series television for writers; the pleasures and challenges of telling a story over several years rather than two hours; how the relationships between writers and directors differs in television versus film; the thrill (and terror) of producing twelve hours of drama that must be written, shot, and edited in a matter of weeks; what really goes on in a writers’ room; and why the writer is the industry’s new auteur. Ron Nyswaner Nyswaner’s credits include the first independent American film to be selected for Main Competition at the Cannes Film Festival Smithereens; one of the most memorable and influential Hollywood dramas of recent times Philadelphia; a critically acclaimed and controversial cable television film Soldier’s Girl; and the first American-Chinese co-production of an independent film The Painted Veil. He has spent the last two years writing and producing Showtime’s hit series, Ray Donovan, and his gay-marriage themed Freeheld is currently shooting in New York, with Julianne Moore, Ellen Page, and Michael Shannon. He now lives in Los Angeles but considers Woodstock his real home.
2014
WoodstockFilmFestival.com
Hosted by: Us Weekly editor Bradley Jacobs (aka BJ) directs film coverage and appears regularly on TV. He lives with his partner Jack and two VIPs: their dog, Dexter, and a son, Lucas, 3.
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